[Synapse elist] mowing the lawn

Thu Jul 10 18:08:41 CST 2008

Hi and I forgot to say that the idea that GPS can have an influence  
on Jeremy's lawn mowing seems to be a good example of a significant  
relationsphip between map and territory.

Mowing the lawn is one of my favorite things to do. When I was a  
child I mowed my family's large informal garden and would mow  
patterns and connections between trees and other features before  
gradually closing the gaps.

Simeon
On 10 Jul 2008, at 03:30, elist-request at synapse.net.au wrote:

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>    1. Re: elist Digest, Vol 7, Issue 4 (Simeon Lockhart Nelson)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 13:27:18 +0100
> From: Simeon Lockhart Nelson <simeon at simeon-nelson.com>
> Subject: Re: [Synapse elist] elist Digest, Vol 7, Issue 4
> To: elist at synapse.net.au
> Message-ID: <D5D17D46-9C7B-44B4-9FC7-CE2BB2343752 at simeon-nelson.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
>
> Hi all
>
> to take up Jeremy's point about objectivity - I agree map-making
> becomes more objective as technology allows the representation to
> more closely resemble the referent. But i think things get really
> complicated here because in order to represent something adequately
> one has to isolate it form its context somehow. To cartographically
> define a river system, we need to exclude it from the landscape that
> it drains. To make the London underground map useful to users it
> needs to be grossly distorted and excised for its urban context while
> maintaining its underlying topology, i.e. the connections between
> lines. One has to ask whether the acts of representing and
> interpreting the external world rely on a level of abstraction and
> internal processing that puts paid to any possibility of 'objectivity'
>
> On the other hand, Stephen Pinker, the neuroscientist in his 'the
> Blank Slate' (a great read) made the salient point that the visual
> perception of depth is the result of complex brain circuitry but that
> this perception also happens to map perfectly what is happening out
> there in the world - a sort of subjective/objective mutuality.
>
> Perhaps maps are becoming more subjective as we fill our personalised
> maps with that which is significant to ourselves. We know from
> cultural history that the same piece of territory has very different
> significance for different people. One has only to think of the utter
> mutual bewilderment that has occured between indigenous inhabitants
> and European colonisers in the Americas and Australia regarding land
> and land use.
>
> The same piece of territory will have very different meanings and
> resonances to, say, a geologist working for an oil company, an eco-
> tourist and a local farmer. I would think that each of thier personal
> hand-held gps devices would show very different aspects of this
> territory. Another issue that arises from GPS and in-car navigation
> is the ability to navigate in real space. One of the things I
> sometimes ask my students to do on thier first day with me is to draw
> a map of the UK in as much detail as they can including things like
> mountain ranges, rivers, mototways and cities. It worries me that
> many of them appear to have little awareness of even the most
> significant features of the country they live in. Basic relationships
> like that of Wales, Ireland and Scotland to England are often not
> captured. The maps they submit make medieval cartography seem highly
> empirically sophisticated by comparison! I find this strange in the
> age of Google Earth when any of us can explore the most remote corner
> of the earth with panoptic ease.
>
> So maps are useful only in so much as the reader can decode them, can
> relate them to what they represent. As Alfred Korzybski an early
> cyberneticist said 'the map is not the territory' as a caution
> against the danger of confusing or conflating representations of
> reality and reality itself.
>
> According to Victor Papanek, the eminent design theorist, the Inuit
> have extraordinary mental maps. They can remember many miles of
> complex coastline and carve a piece of wood to represent this with
> almost the same level of accuracy as GPS mapping. They can do this by
> by traveling on foot or sledge through the landscape once.
>
> best
>
> Simeon
>
> www.simeon-nelson.com
> On 9 Jul 2008, at 03:30, elist-request at synapse.net.au wrote:
>
>> Send elist mailing list submissions to
>> 	elist at synapse.net.au
>>
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>> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
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>> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>> than "Re: Contents of elist digest..."
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>>
>> Today's Topics:
>>
>>    1. Erika on emergence (Leonel Moura)
>>    2. Mapping (jeremy wood)
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>> -
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:22:49 +0100
>> From: Leonel Moura <leonel.moura at mail.telepac.pt>
>> Subject: [Synapse elist] Erika on emergence
>> To: fur_princess at yahoo.ca,Synapse elist <elist at synapse.net.au>
>> Message-ID: <mailman.2.1215570601.3770.elist at synapse.net.au>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
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>>
>>
>> Erika,
>> Sorry not to answer before, I have been in Brazil and very busy...
>> But just consider this quote of Carl Sagan:
>> If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create
>> the universe
>>
>> In emergence is not really important who or what started it, but the
>> process itself. By nature the outcome is not predictable, hence it is
>> always autonomous from what or who triggered it.
>>
>> Best
>> Leonel
>> http://www.leonelmoura.com/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 21:45:57 +0100
>> From: "jeremy wood" <jwood.net at gmail.com>
>> Subject: [Synapse elist] Mapping
>> To: elist at synapse.net.au
>> Message-ID:
>> 	<b60d7fb70807081345i3a17ff8eyf1613c3b029cd12d at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>
>> Hello All,
>> To assume objectivity in cartographic representation is to assume  
>> that
>> we know all there is to know. In terms of objective opinion and fact,
>> map making becomes more objective as we refine our tools. Perhaps it
>> is the inaccuracies in maps that capture where we are.
>>
>> The recent burst of digital technologies has produced tools and
>> equipment that we have absorbed with ease. We can now locate  
>> ourselves
>> and gain access to information around us from our cell phones. In our
>> hands we have access to multiple maps of our surroundings, all
>> packaged in a compact spacetime calculator that utilizes billions of
>> dollars of rocket power and atomic trail and error.
>>
>> We can all make maps and maps are made for us. I'm thrilled to  
>> hear of
>> Esther Polak's reports of the farmers engaging with GPS. The use of
>> GPS has also rapidly infiltrated our lives and industries. As we  
>> weave
>> our tracks into the landscape I'd like to know how our movements are
>> being tweaked by the technology.
>>
>> The levels of self awareness towards inscribing the landscape, as
>> Simeon Nelson touched upon, resonates through my work. From the
>> recording and mapping of my daily GPS tracks since 2002 I have
>> certainly changed the way I treat my journeys, it has even influenced
>> the way I mow the lawn.
>>
>> jeremy wood.
>> www.gpsdrawing.com/maps.htm [&]
>> www.gpsdrawing.com/gallery/experiments/lawn/lawn06.htm
>>
>>
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